The King's Failing Body II: Arnulf this time
Narratives of decline and measuring "activeness"
In an earlier post I discussed how illness contributed to the downfall of the emperor Charles the Fat. Arnulf utilized anxieties around the illness to mobilize elite support and overthrow his uncle. Yet it seems that the East Frankish royal family was plagued by illness, Arnulf’s father also fell ill and could only continue to rule by writing down his commands. As this might suggest, illness challenged medieval rulers, but rulers could attempt to work around it. Famously, Alfred the Great suffered from illness throughout his life, and in a weird bit of historical coincidence, Alfred died shortly before Arnulf in 899. Both Alfred and Arnulf highlight how rulers could continue to rule even in the face of sickness.
This all ties into what I am currently working on for the last chapter of my dissertation. Since I proceed chronologically through Arnulf’s life, the last chapter deals with the period right before his death when he was seemingly quite ill. Historians have portrayed this period as a sort of collapse of royal authority when Arnulf could no longer act and “could do little but allow his dukes to act as they saw fit.”1 This raises the question, however: how do we evaluate the “activeness” of a ruler?
First we need to understand where the impression of this illness comes from. It was soon after being crowned emperor in 896 that Arnulf was afflicted with a “severe sickness of the head” which caused him to cancel his expedition to Spoleto and rapidly return north.2 Our main narrative source claims that “on account of the illness of [his] body he arranged to winter in Bavaria in private places” in early 897.3 It is this comment by the annalist that led Timothy Reuter to see this as a “significant sign of decline in royal authority.”4 The annalist then continues by noting there was famine that spread through Bavaria, seemingly linking royal illness to the practical conditions of those living in the kingdom. Interestingly, we have evidence that there was actually a famine in these years.5
Connecting the actions of the ruler to the conditions of the kingdom was a common element in Carolingian political discourse.6 In the eyes of Pseudo-Cyprian, who wrote the De duodecim abusivis saeculi, the king who did not rule properly risked threatening the safety of the kingdom with famine, war, and other maladies.7 This idea would be picked up by later authors such as Jonas of Orleans when he wrote his De institutione regia in the 830s.8 It seems likely that the annalist is trying to make some sort of comment on affairs in the kingdom by connecting Arnulf’s illness to the famine. The charter evidence would seem to support the idea that Arnulf effectively retreated from public duties, as there are no charters granted between January 30th and May 5th.9 Charter production is often used as a proxy for the vitality of a king: when they are issuing charters it means people are buying in to what the king is selling, when they are not issuing charters it means people don’t want, or need, their patronage.
Yet what is unusual is the annalist’s commentary here, not the lack of charters. Looking at Arnulf’s charters we can find almost the exact same gap between January and May in the charters in two other years, 889 and 895.10 A similar gap can be found in 893, when Arnulf issued no charters between February and May, and an even longer gap can be found between July 890 and January 891.11 That is, either Arnulf spending time “in private places” in those years too, or something else is explaining the gap. What explains this gap? To be honest, I don’t have a great answer. Perhaps we have simply lost the charters for those years, because in other years Arnulf does issue grants in those months. Or, perhaps there were logistical reasons: the king was traveling, on campaign, etc. The three months with the lowest number of charters were September (only 3 for his entire reign!), December (7), and March (9). Whether Arnulf was ill or not, the charter gap is not, by itself, evidence for a decline in royal authority.
What about the overall number of charters? If Arnulf’s illness was, in reality, impeding the business of royal government we would expect to see a decline in the number of charters produced each year. Here too the years after 896 do not seem to be wholly different. Arnulf issued around ten charters a year from 890 to 898 with a slight peak in 891 (fourteen charters). By the metric of charter production, then, the years from 896 to 898 look similar to the years from 890 to 895. None of this precludes Arnulf being ill in early 897, but it cannot be taken as evidence for a collapse in royal rule.
What the charters suggest is that there was a gap between the narrative representations of Arnulf’s illness and the reality of governing. The king’s body was freighted with meaning, both practical and cosmological. Especially if the king’s authority depended on a martial presence, illness proved dangerous. Arnulf had developed a reputation for being warlike, using the epithet invictissimus (“the most invincible”) in the signum line of his charters. This perhaps explains why in 898 Arnulf led a siege of the city of Mautern by “ship because now at that time the sick [king] was weary in body.”12 The king’s failing body was a topic of concern, but the king had an amount of agency too, and could work to counteract that presentation. Of course, illness cannot be simply willed away and Arnulf died on December 8th, 899.13 Despite the illness Arnulf continued to rule as best he could, and this meant continuing to present his ability to respond to military threats. At the same time the charters continued to flow from the court, indicating not only that the court functioned, but that recipients believed Arnulf’s authority and patronage was still valuable. The lesson here is that it is easy to see signs of “decline” in narrative sources but the reality beneath the surface can be surprisingly stable.
P. Riche, The Carolingians: a Family who Forged Europe, trans. M. I. Allen (Philadelphia, 1993), p. 231.
AF, s.a. 896, p. 129: gravi infirmitate capitis.
AF, s.a. 897, p. 130: propter gravitudinem corporis in Baioaria secretis locis hiemare disposuit.
T. Reuter (trans.), The Annals of Fulda, p. 136, n. 2.
There was also a noted famine in 895, AF (B), s.a. 895, p. 125. Evidence suggests that there was a period of food instability from 895 to 897, see T. Newfield, “The Contours, Frequency and Causation of Subsistence Crises in Carolingian Europe (750-950 CE),” in P. Benito I Monclús (ed.), Crisis Alimentarias en la Edad Media: Modelos, Explicaciones y Representaciones (Lleida, 2013), pp. 117-172 at pp. 144-145. This is not noted, however, in M. McCormick, P. Dutton, and P. Mayewski, “Volcanoes and the Climate Forcing of Carolingian Europe, A.D. 750-950,” Speculum 82, no. 4 (2007): 865-895.
On mirrors for princes as a genre see K. Ubl, “Carolingian Mirrors for Princes: Texts, Contents, Impact,” in N-L. Perret and S. Péquignot (eds), A Critical Companion to the ‘Mirrors for Princes’ Literature (Leiden, 2022), pp. 74-107. Often the connection is in the context of sexual impurity, see S. Airlie, “Private Bodies and the Body Politic in the Divorce Case of Lothar II,” Past & Present 161 (1998): 3-38. For famines specifically see J.-P. Devroey, Le Nature et le roi: Environnement, pouvoir société à l'âge de Charlemagne, 740-820 (Paris, 2019) and A. Verhulst, “Karolingische Agrarpolitik: Das Capitulare de Villis und die Hungersnöte von 792-93 und 805/06,” Zeitschrift für Agrargeschichte und Agrarszoiologie 13 (1965): 175-189. See also on Regino using the body as a metaphor for the decline of the empire, H. Kortüm, “Weltgeschichte am Ausgang der Karolingerzeit: Regino von Prüm,” in A. Scharer and G. Schebeilreiter (eds), Historiographie im frühen Mittelalter (Vienna, 1994), pp. 499-513 at pp. 508-512.
R. Meens, “Politics, Mirrors of Princes and the Bible: Sins, Kings and the Well-Being of the Realm,” Early Medieval Europe 7, no. 3 (1998): 345-357 at 349-357.
Ubl, “Carolingian Mirrors,” p. 79.
DD A 151 and 152.
889: DD A 43 (January 20th) and 44 (May 3rd); 895: DD A 131 (January 1st) and 132 (May 5th).
893: DD A 114 and 115; 890-891: DD A 80 and 82.
AF (B), s.a. 899, p. 133: navigio quia iam tunc infirmus corpore fatigaretur.
How we know this is the date of his death could probably be its own post!
Good job comparing charter production in the "ill years" to other years. Very illuminating!